The Red Lion of Earth
by Yue Yun
Summary: The day after the Kerberos Mission goes silent, Keith is expelled. On the bus home he sees a dust cloud. Armed guards are securing a cave. The explanations given - geological survey, training exercise, excavation - doesn't satisfy him. Whatever it is, the Garrison cares more about that than Kerberos. Keith needs to see it, find out what it is. But he isn't the only one curious...
1. The Red Lion

**Disclaimer:** _I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender. Please not sue me._

 _ **The Red Lion of Earth**_

 **Chapter 1**

 _The Red Lion_

* * *

"Garrison Command, this is Keith. Three emergency distress beacons have been detected on the Kerberos surface. We're coming in- _Err_ , I mean, we're inbound for extraction. We'll report back once we've got confirmation of the ship. Crew status is still unknown. We'll be within comm range of the Kerberos in two minutes."

After finishing, Keith paused the recording.

A few key taps later and the missive was being transmitted to Earth-based command via data dump.

Keith gave a sigh of relief.

The hardest part of any simulation wasn't the flying.

It was the formalities.

There was no question that he was the best pilot-cadet in the Garrison, but it didn't let him off the hook for unprofessional system logs. The last thing he needed was another lecture by some admin who never flew a day in their life getting their panties in a knot if all the t's weren't crossed and the i's weren't dotted to exact Garrison-approved specifications.

Besides, Shiro would have wanted him to be more professional. His mantra kept repeating in Keith's head:

Patience yields focus.

Keith flicked some switches and checked the mission log status. The upload was complete. The message would take several minutes before it got data-dumped back to command. Until then, they were on their own.

'They' being him and his team.

Keith glanced back at them. The Engineer was a big - _really_ big. He must have been at least three or four times Keith's size. His name was Punk or Junk or something. Punk suited him. The Comms Spec was a talentless hack who talked big and was about as useful as a wet napkin. The guy probably couldn't call in a pizza delivery, much less handle the comm lines. He was apparently trained as a cargo pilot, a fact he wouldn't shut up about. Keith didn't bother to remember his name.

And lastly, in the pilot and Commander's chair was Keith.

He tilted his head towards the crew. "Comms Spec, what's the sitrep on the ground?"

There was a groan from the back. "Would it kill you to use my name?"

"Pants," Keith addressed again. "What's the sitrep?"

"My name is Lance. _Lance. L-aaan-ce._ "

"Cut the chatter, Mance. You'll bite your tongue." There was some debris. Keith adjusted the trajectory slightly. It was going to get bumpy.

"My name is Lance! L-A-N- _Ow_!"

Keith didn't look behind him. "Engineer, what's the status on the Comms Spec?"

"He bit his tongue, Commander," Punk answered diligently.

"That's what I thought," said Keith with a hint of a smile.

Mance retreated into a pout. _Let him be_ , Keith figured. Piloting a ship in simulation was the closest thing he could get to home right now. It was simple. Dodge a few wayward space rocks, watch the fuel gauge, and try not to damage the ship. The process was mechanical.

Uncomplicated.

It kept Keith's mind off other things, like the the _actual_ Kerberos Mission.

News was still trickling in, but one fact was clear: Kerberos had gone silent.

Less than 24 hours had passed since Commander Holt, Science Officer Holt and Captain Shirogane first failed to respond to messages from Earth Command. Their last recorded data dumps hadn't been released yet. What surveillance imagery that had been released showed explosions and damage. It seemed like multiple simultaneous malfunctions had occured all at once. Garrison Command had already developed a rescue simulation based on what scattered pieces of intel they had.

But one thing they kept repeating was the cause of the disaster:

Pilot error.

A rescue was impossible - it'd be months before they could send rescue drones, much less a manned craft, to Kerberos. The Jupiter Supply Fleet were scrambling to put together recon fly-bys due in a few days.

Keith's grip on the controls tightened. Shiro had known the risks. If something went wrong then it was unlikely any rescue could be attempted in time. He'd never talked about it - the catastrophic possibilities.

Shiro was going on the Kerberos Mission, even if killed him.

Keith adjusted his trajectory slightly. The simulation was a feel good measure, something to keep the cadets focused.

He had to stay focused.

It's what Shiro would've wanted.

"Team, we're about three minutes out. Prepare for landing procedure." Keith looked behind him. What he saw didn't impress him. Punk was rubbing his stomach, looking on the verge of lubricating the controls with vomit and Mance was sneaking looks at a mirror to admire himself. "Comms, any signal?"

Mance jumped and began frantically flipping a few switches and pressing buttons trying to look busy. "Err, negative. All I'm getting is- _Hunk!_ What the heck is your wrench doing in my station?" Mance tossed the wrench to Punk who fumbled it by the tip of his fingers before finally catching it.

"Whoops, almost lost it there, ain't that right my precious?" said Punk as he lovingly stroked his wrench. "Thanks, buddy!"

"And is this your fork? _Ew!_ It's used." The Comm Spec held it up, dangling between his fingertips. "You can see the tiny little food bits! And it smells!"

"Hey, I've been looking for that too!"

Keith groaned.

"Of _course_ I would get paired with the two worst cadets in the whole Garrison," he muttered.

"Hey!" Mance took offense to this. "I'm not _that_ awful! I'm better than Garrison Security at least. Did you guys hear that last night some girl broke into Iverson's office? Little girl walked straight into most heavily guarded office on campus like no one's business!"

"Oh oh oh!" Punk raised his hand excitedly like it was his turn to add to the discussion. "I heard she got in, disassembled Iverson's computer into an oven and baked a cake. I heard it was strawberry tiramisu…"

"Hunk, that was your dream," Mance corrected.

"And a delicious dream that was," Punk said dreamily before his face turned green. "Oh no. Cramps. They're returning. They're returning!"

Keith felt a vein pop in his forehead.

"Look, you two," he began. "We need to prepare- _Wait._ Why is everything flashing red?"

Bright red warnings popped up on every possible console. Problems were everywhere: engines, wings, and even the circuitry. Keith gripped the controls, finding it unresponsive. The engines were dying and fast.

The Engineer checked his console.

" _Uh_. Seems I miscalculated the calibration sequence for the landing thrusters… among other things."

"Like?" Keith snapped.

"Oh, you know… I might have just _maaaybe_ neglected to top off the main engine fuel lines…"

Keith could feel the inertia acting on his body. His chest began to tighten from the accelerating forces compounding exponentially. He gripped the handle, desperately pulling it upwards. There was no response from the controls.

"I'm feeling nothing from the engines! How much fuel did you put in!?"

The Engineer did a quick count with his fingers.

"One carry the nine plus five… uh, _zero._ "

"YOU STUPID-!"

The ship fell into a death spiral.

" _We're crashing!_ " was the last thing Comms Spec Klance said before the blackout.

An hour later, Keith was sitting outside Colonel Iverson's office.

Sitting outside the dean's office wasn't anything unusual for Keith. Neither was sitting outside the office covered in bruises with a bloodied lip. In fact, there was a time when it was a daily routine.

He used to roll his eyes and excuse himself to the dean after every scuffle. He hated the room. It smelled too sterile; too clean. Iverson liked to use the strawberry-scented Garrison-standard air fresheners that smelled like rotten tomatoes. The counter had the same stupid magazines on astro-exploration on top of it for the past ten years.

But, this was the first time Keith was banged up from both fighting _and_ a simulation crash.

"Keith."

Keith looked up. Colonel Iverson was by the door.

"Come in," he said gruffly.

Taking a seat, Keith crossed his legs and arms, waiting for the usual verbal lashing.

But, Colonel Iverson said nothing. Instead, he straightened some folders and signed a few forms. For a while, the only sound in the office was that of the Colonel scribbling on his paperwork. Keith looked around, wondering if anything was going to happen. The Colonel simply continued filling his forms and sorting documents in silence.

"This is different," Keith finally said.

He had expected a stern lecture by now with the usual catchphrases. 'Shape it up!' or 'Quit the showboating!' were the Colonel's favorites for Keith. All of this would be punctuated with 'Cadet!' to remind Keith of his lowly rank.

Colonel Iverson scratched his scraggly chin and sighed, putting down his pen. "A lot of things are different." He took off his hat and laid it on the table. "For one thing, our office security is a joke."

"Colonel!" a voice crackled over the intercom. "Alpha Company has finished securing the perimeter at the excavation site-"

"Get off the open channel, you donkey!" Colonel Iverson shouted into the intercom before ripping out of the power cord. He gave Keith a sideways glance before adjusting himself back into his seat. "Forget you heard any of that."

Keith blinked. That was weird. "What was that about? Excava-"

"Nothing," Colonel Iverson cut him off sharply. "They're just doing a geological survey. But, back to the matter at hand. Cadet… Keith." Folding his hands, he leaned forward. "Do you think Shiro would want this?"

"Want what?"

"You, punching a fellow cadet, for what? Mentioning his name?"

Anger began to boil over. "That _idiot_ said that Shiro-"

Colonel Iverson interjected with a raise of his hand. "The Comms Spec said, and I quote, ' _If Shiro was our pilot, we never would have crashed._ ' End quote. You really punched him over that?" Leaning back into his chair, he smirked. "Can't say he's wrong though."

"I'd do it again," Keith growled.

"This isn't what Shiro would have wanted-"

"What the hell do you know about what Shiro would _want_!?"

"Look, kid," said Colonel Iverson in a low growl. "You got the talent, but you're the worst discipline case in the history of the Galaxy Garrison! If Captain Shirogane didn't vouch for you, you'd still be stuck at the orphanage waiting the rest of eternity for a pair of saints who could tolerate your lousy attitude. This world's got rules, kid, and I've tolerated your insubordination for long enough! But since I've got a lot bigger problems on my plate today… and out of respect for Shiro, I'm going to give you one last-"

"What the hell can I learn from a _washout_?"

The words were out of Keith's mouth before he could even think about pretending to regret them.

Colonel Iverson's face turned red.

" _Oh!_ You think _you're_ too good for Galaxy Garrison, eh?" Putting on his cap, he resumed his authoritarian self. "Then get out! _Scram!_ I don't care if you're the best pilot - you're a hothead with no discipline and no respect for the chain of command! Pack your bags! You're expelled! I'd court-martial you but you ain't worth the paperwork! Get the hell out of my school! Out. _**OUT!**_ "

Within seconds, a pair of soldiers flanked Keith.

Stares and whispers from other students weren't anything new. He wasn't deaf to the rumors and kids loved to gossip. Usually, it was about a fight from last week or Keith correcting some desk-jockey instructor. On rare occasions, it'd be admiration for beating the latest flight sim.

But, today was different. Today, Keith was being escorted out by armed guards.

It was annoying.

Keith cleared out his dorm room. Anything he didn't bring with him would be destroyed. Everything he owned could fit into a duffel bag. He had to return the Garrison uniform, though. They made it clear it would be burned upon disposal. Keith didn't mind. He preferred his red jacket anyway.

The bus was commissioned and had to be driven out. They wouldn't give Keith the satisfaction of leaving in a car or something respectable. No, instead they made him wait outside in the hot desert, with no shade, under the watch of armed guards. Students walking by would point and whisper. It was deliberate and designed to be humiliating.

What did Keith care?

Nothing really mattered anymore.

This bus was an old prison bus. Keith had seen it a few times. Most cadets getting sent home were usually the homesick-types, those failing physical or mental standards, or repeat curfew breakers. Illicit relationships were also forbidden on Garrison property. Keith figured he might be the first cadet to get expelled for a _real_ discipline issue instead of getting caught with a girl in the boy's restroom.

The guards carelessly tossed his bags into the storage compartments.

"Get in," one grunted.

Graffiti was everywhere. The green seat cushions were sliced up with the stuffing sticking out. A few red blotches resembled puddles of blood. Keith wondered if they were from stabbings or vomiting or both.

"What you staring at?" a guard growled. "You think this is some kind of princess picnic? Take a seat, _civilian_."

Keith winced. He already didn't like it when the instructors kept barking at him as a 'cadet'. And now here they were, flexing their superiority by calling him a 'civilian'.

After taking a seat, the bus rumbled, moving forward. The guard who'd barked at Keith sat at the back and couldn't have looked more disinterested. Keith leaned against the window, watching the familiar mountains and desert plains pass by.

He remembered the first time he came to Garrison Command. Shiro had driven Keith there in an old muscle car to visit the campus and show him around. Shiro had sworn he'd fix it up one day. It had been one of the few times Shiro had talked so passionately about something that wasn't about space. He'd wanted to rework the engine, get new rims, and a fresh coat of black paint with some red flames. Shiro had joked that Keith could wax it as a summer job.

Keith would have taken Shiro up on that.

With his head against the grimy window, something caught the corner of his eye.

In the distance, there was a dust cloud. It could have been a sandstorm but the wind was weak today. Yet there was a gigantic column of sand spiralling into the air. Squinting, Keith could see a large formation of rovers circling the area and bunkers being set up.

"What's going on over there?" he asked, a bit loudly so that the guard could hear.

"Routine training exercise," answered the guard. "Now shut up. I want to take a nap."

Keith focused his gaze back to the dust cloud fast disappearing in the distance. There must have been a full battalion over there. In the sky, multiple fighters were doing flybys and recon drills. Colonel Iverson had mentioned a geological survey. And now the guard said that it was a routine training exercise? What kind of 'routine training exercise' for a 'geological survey' required that many troops and armed personnel?

Shiro and the Kerberos Mission had disappeared less than a day ago and yet the Garrison was going to throw _that much_ material and manpower into setting up a perimeter instead of working on a way to find them?

What was out there? It had to be something big, right?

He'd already been thrown out. What else could they do?

He needed to see it.

 _Sorry Shiro_ , Keith thought. _Patience yields focus, but my gut is telling me to do it._

The bus dropped Keith off at a shack in the middle of nowhere a few clicks away from the Garrison.

Home, sweet home, he guessed.

The house was pretty much how he'd left it: full of junk, red speeder in the back, and everything covered in dust. The windows were boarded up and covered in tarp. But that didn't matter right now. Combing through the house, he found a pair of binoculars. Before long, he was his speeder gunning towards the site.

The dust storm had faded when he got there. Stopping on a peak a distance away, Keith began searching through his binoculars. He couldn't see much. There were bunkers and command tents set up, but most of the guards were further out in front of what looked like a cave doing patrols in their rovers.

Keith frowned. For a routine training exercise geological survey, they were armed to the teeth.

A prickle went down his neck. He quickly looked around. There wasn't anyone there, which was strange. He could have sworn he felt someone's eyes on him. Regardless, he couldn't stay much longer. Not unless he wanted to be caught for real.

Back at the house, there was nothing there that could get him to Kerberos. All there was, was a lot of fireworks in the basement. Keith's dad frequented a year-round fireworks store on tribal territory north of the shack. They were the ' _no questions asked so long as the money is good_ '-sort of folks.

There was some fertilizer, ammonia, and other chemicals leftover in the shack. Keith thought it was funny. He had never seen his dad as much of a farmer, especially with nothing to grow out in the desert. So why was there all of this bomb-making material?

He shook the conspiracy theories out of his head, returning to his task. He then realized what he was doing and acknowledged he was living a conspiracy: finding out what the Garrison was hiding would be his manifesto.

A small workshop was set up in the basement: a desk, some tools, and all the ingredients for bombs. As he worked, Keith's thoughts drifted to Shiro. He would definitely advise against this.

But, the Garrison was hiding something, and Keith needed to know what. What could be more important than the Kerberos Mission? What was with all of this secrecy and bad cover-up stories? Colonel Iverson had ripped out his intercom over it.

Shiro and the crew had oxygenator suits that could produce enough oxygen to last two days without recharge. The Kerberos ship had enough oxygen reserves to last for hundreds of recharges, far more than they'd ever need during the scope of the mission. A year's worth, at least.

Command Holt and his son were also the most brilliant engineers and scientists ever produced by the Garrison. They'd requested enough freeze dried peas to last them for a year. Shiro had even bragged how they could power up a rover using a toenail clipper, some copper wire, and duct tape.

So, what was it?

Why did the Garrison write them off? They were the best damn crew that Earth had!

They could be alive! They _had_ to be!

Shiro was the best pilot to graduate the Garrison. There wasn't any way that the crash was his fault. Even if every newsreel in the world kept blasting the same headline, _KERBEROS MISSION SILENT: PILOT ERROR_ , Keith just didn't believe it. He couldn't. They had all of the means to survive. So then, what if they were stranded? What if they were unable to communicate? What if Shiro was stuck in the emergency life-support bunker with nothing but a noisy oxygenator and freeze dried peas?

What if they could still be saved, but the Garrison had other _priorities_ to attend to?

Keith looked at the assortment of explosive rigs in front of him.

The answer was whatever they were doing inside that cave.

Geological survey.

Routine training exercise.

… Excavation.

Keith needed to see it.

He needed to see what was more important than the lives of Shiro. Keith owed that much to him, at least. _Besides_ , he mused, _it didn't hurt to get a chance of destroying a bit of Garrison property_.

With the chemicals and fireworks, it was possible to create explosions. Tremors from the explosions could resemble an earthquake and force them to evacuate the cave as was standard Galaxy Garrison protocol. Failing that, Keith had also made a few smoke bombs. Smelly colored gas would make them think it was a chemical agent attack. Luckily, his dad left plenty of canned peaches, which had _definitely_ gone rotten, to mix in with the smoke bombs. The horrid smell should clear the tunnels and their bowels.

Then in the ensuing chaos, Keith would slip in.

As the sun began to set, he looked up to the stars and gave Shiro another thanks. Who knew a summer course in bomb-making (technically, how to _not_ make bombs) would actually be useful for a former astro explorer cadet?

The night before his plan was set in motion, Keith waited with the speeder a few clicks away from the excavation site, just outside the security perimeter. He was kicked out the Garrison yesterday morning and already he was preparing to blow up school property.

The bombs were set to explode at the crack of dawn.

The timers were primed. Keith disassembled a couple of old egg timers around the house for them.

He didn't have a gun, but he had a dagger. He'd found it in his room, wrapped in cloth. His dad had said it was his mom's. It was light and made of a metal unlike anything found on Earth. There was a glowing purple mark on the hilt that looked like a lightning bolt. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing.

Putting down his binoculars, Keith gave his speeder one last pat for goodluck. In all likelihood, old rustbucket was going to be captured immediately. It was a shame. He'd taken it out of the shed for a spin last night and already he was sentimental. It reminded him of all those times when he and Shiro-

"Hey!"

" _Wuahhh!_ "

Keith nearly toppled off his speeder. He swung himself off it. Drawing his dagger, he was ready to fight whoever was dumb enough to try to get the jump on him-!

"That wasn't a very manly scream."

It was a girl.

Keith lowered his stance. Standing in the early dawnlight was a short but harmless enough looking girl. Since she wasn't wearing a uniform, so she probably wasn't Garrison, instead wearing a green sweater and grey shorts. A pair of glasses was on her face and her long brown hair was in a side ponytail. Antennae, wires, and computer stuff were sticking out of her overstuffed backpack. She looked like someone ready to go on a techno-camping trip.

Keith stepped back a bit. He didn't like the idea of flipping a kid onto her back.

"You're going to get past those Garrison guys, right?" the girl asked. "Let me join you! Please!"

And she clapped her hands together and lowered her head into a bow.

Keith quickly composed himself. "W-who are you?" he asked. "How do you know that?"

"I'm Kat- I mean, Pidge. Pidge Gunderson!" The girl quickly ran up to Keith's speeder, already mounting it before he could stop her. "You're going to get inside that cavern, right?" she asked. "Where the alien ship is? Let me hitch a ride with you, yeah? Please, Keith. Please!"

"Get off my speeder!" Keith shouted. "And how do you know any of this? How do you know my name!? Wait." He paused. "What alien ship?"

"I've been watching you. _Duh._ Also, yeah, it's an alien ship." She looked at him like he was the class dunce who failed a simple 2 + 2 problem. "Haven't you seen heard the radio chatter? They couldn't encrypt a frequency even if Turing headbutted them in the face with it."

"No," Keith answered sharply. Alien ships? Was this girl for real? "What do you mean you've been watching me?" He was part-surprised, part-exasperated. "And you still haven't answered my question. How do you know my name?"

The girl, Pidge, rolled her eyes. "Because the Garrison guards are too lazy to actually do their patrols. And _come on_! A _red_ speeder? In the desert? You stick out like a sore thumb!" she scoffed. "Also, your student info is still in the Garrison database and that was a zinch to hack. Just had to check flip through a couple of student ID photos until I recognized the mullet." Pidge crossed her arms, obviously pleased with herself. "But seriously, we're both heading over to that cave base, right? Let's work together!"

Keith's eye twitched. He pointed her off his speeder.

"Get off."

"Let me come with!"

"Get off!"

"Please! I'll behave and be quiet!"

"Kid. Just get off my speed-!"

 _Boom!_

A series of explosions rocked the ground. Keith quickly pulled out his binoculars again, scanning the base area. A large black mushroom cloud filled his sights. Below it, he could see a convoy of Garrison rovers dispatched from the excavation site towards it while other personnel were being evacuated to nearby bunkers.

"Those are your bombs, right? Your diversion?" Pidge leaned off the speeder, using her hand to cover her eyes as she squinted into the distance. Colorful rockets whistled into the sky. "Fireworks supplemented with a chemical cocktail, huh? It sure works wonders."

"Yeah," Keith grunted as he jumped in front of Pidge. Time was short and the window to slip in was fast closing. "Hold on!" And with a rev of the speeder's engine, they were off.

" _Ahhh!_ " Pidge screamed into Keith's back. Her thin arms wrapped themselves around his waist. "S-slow down!"

"Shut up! You'll bite your tongue!"

As the explosions shook the valley, Keith swept by on his speeder. The moment they hit the lip of the cave, he took off in a sprint, but not before giving his speeder one last short salute. Pidge followed close behind.

"Here!" He tossed a few smoke bombs with peach satchels tied to them to Pidge. "Pull and throw!"

The smoke bombs that rolled deeper into the cave as the two of them dodged and avoided evacuating scientists, technicians, and engineers. Nobody seemed to mind two people was actually running _deeper_ into the cave. The air was soon full of the pungent smell of fermented peaches.

"This smell is disgusting!" Pidge shouted, pinching her nose.

No one was stopping the pair of plain-clothed civilians. Everyone was too concerned with saving their own hide to notice them. While Keith was grateful that getting was easy, he realized there was a major problem with his plan:

"Do you know your way around?" asked Pidge.

Keith had assumed the tunnel network would be a straight forward line going straight to the alien ship. Instead there were side tunnels and passages and random rooms cut into the rock itself that lead to dead ends. It didn't help that walls were littered with cave paintings of a red cat thing prowling around.

"They keep adding tunnels and closing them off," continued Pidge, "so I couldn't get an accurate map of the place the past few days. They must really want to protect that alien ship."

"How do you know that it's an alien ship?" Keith asked. He didn't buy the existence of aliens, but this girl seemed convinced that they exist.

Pidge smiled, patting the equipment on her backpack. "Garrison radio chatter has been talking about it nonstop. Carbon dating on the rocks says it predates human civilization! The metal can produce its own energy and-"

Keith raised a hand to stop her.

"Can the thing fly?" he asked. "Fly us all the way to Kerberos?"

The girl tilted her head. Then, her eyes widened.

"You want to get to Kerberos, too!? That's great!" She stuck a hand into her backpack as she fished out her laptop. "I don't know if it can't fly, but it's an alien ship, right? It gotta be able to fly! Here, lemme show you-"

"No time," said Keith as he grabbed her arm, pulling her deeper into the cave. She shoved her laptop back into her backpack, trying to keep up with his pace. All the while, the shouting and angry orders grew louder in the distance.

"Do you even know where you're going!?"

"No!"

Pidge glanced behind her. "Those Garrison guys are going to be on us any minute now!" she shouted. "And you have no idea where we're going!?"

Keith ignored her and just kept running.

He didn't know how he knew this, but it felt like something was guiding him.

A gut instinct. Just like before.

It was crazy, but it was better than nothing.

The cave grew brighter as Keith and Pidge ran further in. Light seared Keith's eyes as they broke into a large area. Flood lights were set up all around them, illuminating the cave walls and ground, but he paid no attention. The instinct - it was getting stronger-

"Keith, stop!"

Pidge's hand yanked him backwards. He blinked and gasped. His feet dug into the ground, his face stopping barely a few inches before a roaring lion. He jolted backwards, raising a hand to defend himself-

… Wait.

It was just a drawing. A drawing on a dead end.

Pidge was behind him, gasping for air. "I should have never, ever, skipped out on gym class," she coughed. She'd taken her hand back to place them both on her knees as she hacked her lungs out.

Keith frowned. It was weird… He hadn't even realised… It had looked so real… Up close it was just an abstract picture…

And still-

"There's a shortcut here," he muttered. "I can feel it."

It sounded stupid out loud, but it was true. There was a feeling swirling within him that told him that there was a faster way to his destination through here.

"Well, I see nothing! Except all these cave paintings," Pidge snapped back. She walked around, scanning them. "They're ancient," she observed, running a hand along the images. "Each of them tells a different story about a red lion… this one shows it hunting, this one's jumping through the stars…"

That detail didn't interest Keith. He looked around. "Where's the ship?"

There was no sign of an alien ship. No flying saucer. No weird cube-thing. Not even any geometric shapes.

Pidge shrugged before turning around behind her towards the route they had taken. "I don't know, but I definitely hear angry Garrison guards coming." She frowned. "Why are there people bowing to it?"

"To what?"

"The lion!"

Keith crossed his arms and growled in frustration. "Who cares?" he snapped, drawing his leg back. "Right now we're stuck here, and this stupid- _Wuahhh_!"

Just as his foot made contact with the rock, the ground beneath him glowed red and gave away beneath his feet.

"Keith!"

Pidge reached out, trying to grab his jacket-

"Whoaaa!"

-only to end up tumbling in with him.

They both slid down and were thrown forward, landing in a pool of water.

"Ow… ow… ow…" Pidge moaned, rubbing her head. "Why did-? Oh!" She stiffened. "What… is that?"

Following her gaze, Keith looked up to see a pair of glowing yellow eyes staring back at him.

This was what Keith was looking for. The thought was unshakable.

This was-

"The Red Lion," Pidge breathed. "The one from the drawings…"

It was a towering giant but looked thin and elegant. The curves of its armor were fluid. Around it was a red forcefield made up of honeycomb-shaped plates.

Keith ran up to it, banging on its spherical forcefield.

"It's some kind of particle barrier," said Pidge. She tapped on it a few times, eliciting a soft hum as her hand was repulsed. "This stuff's way more advanced than the ones at the Garrison. Look at the size of it!"

"Hey! Open up!" Keith called out, expecting the voice to answer. He got silence instead. He continued hammering his fist away at the particle barrier. All it did was send harmless ripples through it. It was as solid as granite.

The footsteps and shouts grew closer and closer. The Garrison soldiers must have figured out the smoke bombs were harmless. But, from where was that noise coming from? And how? Keith looked around. Where could there have-?

He scowled.

The hole they'd fallen through was still open but there was nothing he could about it. It wasn't what caught his attention, either.

Just a couple of meters from the hole was a Garrison made tunnel. It was still wide open, easily accessible, and well-lit. If that hole wasn't closed up, there'd be captured in seconds. No, there had to be _some_ way to slow them down. Keith checked his bag. All he had were a couple of smoke bombs, some timers, and some fuses.

"If I could just collapse that tunnel…"

"You want to collapse the entrance?" Pidge pointed towards some cracks on the side of the cave wall. "You can try sticking the bombs in those cracks. If you can set them just right, a synchronous timed explosion should cause the support beams to shudder at _juuuust_ the right frequen- Yeah, you know what?" She held out her hands. "Your face tells me that I should do it. Give 'em here."

Keith dumbly handed the last of his ordinance over as Pidge ran into the hole. She set the charges, flinging the peach satchels to the floor as she did so.

"Uh, do you know what you're doing?" he asked hesitantly.

"Totally!" Pidge replied, casually waving him off. "I'm just reconverting these gas bombs to more conventional explosives by sealing up with expulsion tubes with some of the peach-gel paste." Keith looked down the hall. He could see the flicker of flashlights and movements of shadows at the far, far end. "I've seen videos of this on the internet. How hard could it be? It's just applied physics with a bit of thermochemistry right? Wait." She turned back to him, a look of disgust on her face. "This timer setup is primitive! It's just an egg timer!"

"I was on a budget," Keith growled. Here he was, getting defensive over his homebrew explosives.

And the guards' footsteps continued to get louder.

After a few seconds, Pidge clapped her hands. Apparently pleased with her work, she jskipped back to Keith's side. The timer was ticking away.

"I readjusted the timer so it does the ticking noise," she explained. "Makes it feel more authentic, you know?" She began to hum as the seconds ticked down.

Keith sighed.

"Hey!"

A rough voice shouted down the tunnel. It was one of the guards, his rifle out and aimed at them. Behind him were several more guards, all armed and ready to take the intruders down.

"Keep your hands where we can see them!" he called out. "You're both under arr-!"

"Seeya," Pidge said with a wave.

Four explosions shook the cave in sequence. It was like Pop, pop, pop… _Pop!_ Bits and pieces of rocks fell from the ceiling. Keith grabbed Pidge and pulled her further away, shielding himself on top of her.

"Cave in!" came the guard's muffled scream. "Evacuate!" The warning was echoed to the entire force as they made a retreat.

"That worked!" Pidge cheered. " _Ha_! I knew it! Wasn't that so cool? Tell me that wasn't the sickest display of controlled demolition you've ever seen! I mean, granted we should have worn goggles, hardhats, and probably have stood waaay farther back, but still, _preeetty_ cool, am I right?"

"Err, yeah," said Keith. "It was definitely something."

"Also, um, can you get off me now?"

Getting to his feet, Keith held out his hand. Taking it, Pidge stood next to him, and together they surveyed the damage. The hole was most definitely closed now.

"So," Pidge began slowly. "What's phase two?"

"Phase two?"

Pidge looked at Keith with a questioning eyebrow. "You… do have a phase two right?" He continued to look confused. "Don't tell me you don't have a plan. Oh come on! You look like a guy with a plan! You came up with setting up diversionary bombs and everything! How could you not have a plan!?"

"I didn't think the alien ship would have a force field around it!" Keith said defensively.

"First off, particle barrier. Second, it's an alien ship! What did you think it was going to have around it? Tomato sauce!?"

"I don't know! I didn't even realize there was an alien ship down here!"

Pidge sucked in a deep breath. "Okay, okay. Do you at least have an exit strategy? A way to get out?"

"No?" Keith's eye drifted upward in thought. "It never really occurred to me."

"It never really occurred to you to think of an exit strategy!?"

"I just wanted to see what was down here..." Keith murmured before turned towards the Lion. "I think if we could open that Lion up, I think I can pilot it and, you know… fly away… maybe?"

A scrutinizing 'are you serious?' look swept Pidge's face.

"So, you're telling me that you were banking on waltzing in here, with no exist strategy and now your new plan is to climb aboard an alien ship that you had no idea was even in here in the first place - an alien ship I might add that looks like a giant metal cat - getting inside with no understanding of the alien language, alien control systems, or even if alien anatomy was compatible for a human pilot's and just… _fly away_?"

Keith thought about it.

"Well, any plan would sound stupid if you use 'alien' that many times."

Pidge's lips contorted into a horrified smile.

"No. No, no, no! How am I supposed to find-? No. Oh no. I'm going to jail. _I am going to jail_!"

She began to pace back and forth as she rambled.

"Or worse! They might send me to prison! Federal _and_ state! Probably even Super-Max! I'll be charged with high treason - _if they charge me at all_! The Garrison would never confirm aliens exist. We'll be kept on black sites! They'll toss us in an offshore interrogation facility wearing bags over our heads! They might even, even..."

Pidge's eyes widened in horror, her mouth a stuttering mess.

" _WHAT IF THEY TELL MOM!?_ "

Then she screamed. A lot.

"Screaming isn't helping!" Keith yelled. "We're stuck in here and the _last_ thing we need is your panicking."

The screaming stopped.

"Guess we're all in, then," Pidge said quietly. "Except we're stuck in a cave with a giant cat that won't let us in! Oh great. I'm panicking. I'm panicking aren't I? I'm definitely panicking. What are we going to do? What are we going to d-!?"

Keith's hand covered her mouth.

"Calm down. There's a way out of this," he said. "And it's through this stupid cat!" he shouted, scowling at the mecha-cat thing. "If this cat can fly us out of here…"

Pidge mumbled something.

"What?" Keith turned back towards her. "Oh. Sorry." He removed his hand.

"Thank you." Bemused, Pidge took a deep breath. "I meant to say, assuming alien cats fly, of course." Keith looked at her blankly. "What?"

He groaned.

On the other end of the debris wall, the sound of feet colliding with rock could be heard. Then, several drills started up. Garrison guards were almost there to take them in.

Keith walked towards the big, ancient alien cat thing.

"Hello? Anyone home?" he asked. "Oh come on! What do you want? A song!?"

"You could try singing…?" Pidge suggested. Keith shot her a glare. " _What!?_ I'm just trying to be helpful!"

"An alien cat-ship isn't going to open up to us because of my _singing_."

"Okay, okay, okay." Pidge rubbed her temples. "You could try to figure out the alien voice commands? Aliens have to have voice commands right? Like abra kadabra or alakazam?" she suggested with accompanying hand motions.

"Those are _magic_ words."

"Well they're better than nothing!" Pidge defended. She peeked back at the debris wall. Some more rocks fell away. The drilling sound was growing louder and louder. "Uh, Keith? Those Garrison guys are almost here!"

"Alright, fine!" Keith yelled at the alien cat-ship. "Stick down here in your stupid cave! I need to find Shiro! He needs me! And if you're not going to help then you can just stay down here!"

He turned around to leave. Well, the problem was the _leaving_ part. They were kind of sealed in. All they could do was wait for the Garrison guards to break through the debris. He then needed to think of a plan to take out what was possibly several dozen armed Garrison guards ready to shoot to kill. Keith closed his eyes. On the plus side, they'd have to funnel in at first. On the minus, they'd break through the rest of the rock and storm in eventually. Also, there was, what? One, maybe two hundred guards on the other side?

All Keith had was a dagger and a teenage girl with a geeked out backpack. Those weren't exactly _optimal_ weapons.

He _really_ hoped that no one got the bright idea of falling down that stupid lion hole…

"Patience yields focus," he told himself. He repeated the mantra, hoping Shiro's spirit would provide some guidance all the way from the cold void of space. "Patience yields focus, patience yields focus, patience yields focus… _Argh!_ Okay nothing's happening." Keith gave Pidge an angry glare. "Look! Here's the plan! You listening?"

Pidge's eyes brightened.

Keith pointed toward the far side of the cave.

"Go hide in the corner. Keep your hands up. At least they'll take you alive if you don't move."

"Wha-?"

"I'm going to wait for them to break through and then take out all the guards. If I move in close enough then they won't be able to get a clear shot. If I somehow to manage to knock them all out, follow me out. If not, just sit there and let them take you." Keith bent over, his eyes focused at Pidge. "Don't. Fight. Them. Are we clear?"

He didn't need the blood of some little girl on his hands. He didn't know a lick about her, but he knew enough that Shiro would never approve of him putting some random kid's life in jeopardy. If this was the end of Keith's road, then he didn't want to bring anyone else with him.

Pidge's mouth was slightly agape. Then she raised her hands in the air and screamed.

" _That's the stupidest plan I've ever heard!_ "

Keith rolled his eyes and began to tune her out. He didn't need Pidge listing out every single thing stacked against him. It was enough that everything in his mind screamed 'stupid plan!'. _Of course it was a stupid plan_. One teenager with a mullet and a dagger against a small company of the most heavily armed and well-trained soldiers on Earth?

It may as well be a death sentence, like a gladiator running a never-ending gauntlet.

But there was a feeling, a raging instinct swirl in his gut - something stirring within his very soul. Keith had to do it this way. Either he would succeed or die trying. There was no other option. It was the ultimatum he had placed on himself because every other outcome was unacceptable.

"Look," he said. "I know that it's an awful plan, alright? Just shut up and do it!"

"But why-?"

"If there's a way out of here, I'll find it," he growled. "And if I can't find it - _I'll make one myself_!"

And a roar filled his ears.

"W-wha-?" Pidge gasped. "What was-?"

The air pulsed.

Keith whipped around.

The Red Lion's eyes gleamed yellow. Mechanical groans clanked as it slowly began to shift.

It roared again.

The honeycomb force field surrounding it fell, slowly dissipating into the air. Pidge squeaked as the lion repositioned itself, each of its paws causing a small tremor. The beast appeared ready to pounce.

It lowered its head, openings its mouth, beckoning Keith to enter within.

"U-uh… H-hi, Kitty?"

* * *

 _Chapter 1 Fin_

 **Season 1**

 **Editor:** _Olivier Roux_

 **Next Chapter:** _Into the Abyss_

 **A/N:** _Thanks for reading._

 _This is a 'what-if'-fic where Keith and Pidge stumble into finding the Red Lion. Their personalities complement each other well and I liked the idea of those two having their own wacky adventures and slowly finding the other Paladins and Lions, similar to most JRPGs stories._ _There are other divergences down the line but the goal is to stick as close to canon as possible and use only locations, characters, alien racesfrom established canon. I'm more flexible with intangible worldbuilding concepts since I'm not a fan of named original characters in fanfics._

 _I hope you enjoyed the chapter. If you liked it, feel free to fav/follow. If you have any thoughts on the fic, feel free to leave a review._


	2. Into the Abyss

**Disclaimer:** _I do not own Voltron: Legendary Defender._ _Please do not sue me._

 _ **The Red Lion of Earth**_

 **Chapter 2**

 _Into the Abyss_

* * *

The engines within purred.

Keith climbed the steps of the jaw. Pidge followed close behind. The interior was majestic silver, lined with blue circuitry. The giant robot cat's interior was white, polished without a speck of dust. Keith had expected the air inside to be stale and musty. Instead it was smooth — like it was from another world.

The doors into the mouth of the beast _wooshed_ open.

Keith ascended the steps. They were in the neck of the lion. Pidge followed close behind, a hand tugging on Keith's jacket.

A lone pilot chair rested in the cockpit.

"Incredible," Pidge murmured. She began running her hands all over the consoles, interfaces, and blank walls. "It's so smooth! And cool! I mean, ' _cool_ ' as in the temperature, but also because this is just _so_ cool!"

As Pidge admired the tech, Keith took a seat and began fiddling with the control sticks. They were placed on either side of the pilot chair. Pushing and pulling them had no effect.

"So, how do I make this thing mo—?"

A growl sounded in Keith's mind. Red lights flashed on. Holographic images ignited, filling the blank walls with color. Consoles and screens spurred to life. He could see the surrounding cave wall in crystal-clear definition. He knew the temperature in the caves, the room, and even the weather. He knew precisely how many guards were preparing to breach — 186 armed personnel — and could feel the vibrations of their drilling equipment. Pings of information bled into his mind, as if the Lion was telling him everything, excited to share. Glad to finally have someone to share it with.

The Lion roared to life.

Keith could tell it was the Lion itself that had roared. He felt his own heart and ribcage shudder. It was strange, almost like an out-of-body but still in-body experience. A restless urge to crack his back and stretch his arms surged over his body. By cracking his knuckles, gripping the control sticks, and shifting his neck to loosen it, Keith felt a bit better.

But, where did that feeling come from?

It was almost as if… as if Keith could feel what the Lion felt…

… and the Red Lion was a bit cranky.

"We… we're moving!" Pidge exclaimed.

A spike of pain filled Keith's mind. It felt like a paw swiping at his front lobe and a searing headache was left in its wake. The Lion's paws were readjusting itself as it stood up. It lifted its head high, almost touching the cave's ceiling. Shuffling its feet, the Lion began pacing back and forth across the cave, sending light tremors throughout and causing bits and pieces of stalactite to fall.

"How are you moving this thing?" Pidge asked excitedly. "You have two controls but the movements you're making are way too complex for a pair of analog sticks!"

"I don't know," Keith said, gritting his teeth. He tried to make the Lion stop, but every thought was met with hesitation — a light rejection. "I just think it and the Red Lion either agrees or disagrees. The problem is that it keeps telling me no!"

"So it's some kind of telepathic AI? _Sweet!_ It's name is the Red Lion? Wow! It's so simple and elegant like the Harvard Mark II."

Keith wasn't sharing Pidge's enthusiasm. It felt as if every time he wanted the Lion to stop, a thought would fill his mind saying ' _no!_ '. Then the Lion steadied itself, and lowered its hind legs.

It took a seat.

"T-there," Keith sighed. "Finally." He collapsed back into his seat, wiping off some sweat. " _Wooooo_ ," he cheered lightheartedly.

Pidge appeared just as relieved. She raised a hand towards him with an expectant smile on her face. Looking at her hand, Keith and took it into his own.

He shook her hand.

Pidge looked like she swallowed a sour lemon.

"We're going to work on that—"

 _Boom!_

An explosion interrupted her.

The Garrison had blown through the debris wall.

Keith gripped the controls as he readied the Lion into a pounce. Surprisingly, the Lion obeyed. On the visual display, multiple lifeforms were detected. They each wore heavily armored uniforms. With their path cleared they entered en mass, flooding the cave. Even with the equipment, Keith recognized some of them: Mr. Harris, Professor Montgomery, Colonel Iverson — all of their weapons were pointed towards the Red Lion.

Colonel Iverson stepped forward with a megaphone.

"Keith! Miss Holt!" he shouted. The Lion's visual display zoomed in on his face, amplifying the audio. Keith could see the vein popping out from beneath his Colonel beret. Seeing his arrogant mug still ticked Keith off. "We know you're in there! Step out of the big robot-cat thing _immediately_!"

Before Keith could respond, the Lion roared.

For an instant, even though the cat was a robot, made from metal, it felt like his own flesh and muscles. He could feel intense emotions burning through him and the Lion: anger, disdain… fear. Like a cornered beast, the Lion roared again. A few of the Garrison guards backed off while others held their ground.

"No!" Colonel Iverson barked as he raised a hand. "Hold your fire!"

"The Red Lion…" Keith murmured. Every mental order to halt the Red Lion was ignored. "It wants to fight!"

" _Why!?_ " Pidge screamed. "Tell it to stop!"

"He thinks they're a threat!"

"Threat!?" Pidge started kicking the walls of the cockpit. "Hey! Hey Red Lion! _Stop!_ "

Lowering its head, the Lion unleashed another roar into Colonel Iverson's face. Keith could feel his heart racing as heat swelled within his body. With a drop of the Colonel's arm, the Garrison soldiers that didn't flee opened fire.

"The Lion wants to shoot them with a heat ray!" shouted Keith over the sound of bullets ricocheting off the Lion's armor.

Pidge grabbed Keith's hands and tried pulling along with him. "As cool as that sounds, I don't think you want to turn them into barbeque!"

The Red Lion didn't heed Keith's instructions or Pidge's pleas, especially now that the Garrison soldiers began opening fire at the Red Lion's open mouth. The bullets bounced off harmlessly like rain. Keith had to get away from here. If he didn't, then the Lion would just keep auto-firing on anything and everything it didn't like.

Energy began focusing on the Lion's open jaw.

"Hey!" Keith pleaded with the ceiling. "I know they're shooting at you, but there are people I know down there. I don't really like them either but _come on_! I didn't ask for them to get turned into barbeque!"

The Red Lion remained silent, its mind intensely focused on charging up its heat ray.

Keith felt a vein pop in his forehead. He couldn't let those people get hurt from a misunderstanding. He clenched his fist, before realizing he held the Lion's controls.

"Okay fine! If that's how you want to play, you stupid cat… if you want to be that way then I'll force you to you to move!"

With all his might, Keith slammed the controls forward.

The Red leaped forward, head first into the cave wall, just as the heat ray's energy reached critical point. The sudden jolt caused the Lion to fire into the ceiling, burning a hole straight through the rock. A molten tunnel remained, one that led to the open blue sky.

"There!" Pidge pointed. "That's our way out!"

Keith grunted. "Get in there!"

As the Red Lion struggled against Keith's commands, a pair of thrusters on its hind legs activated, propelling it into the hole. Even with this small victory, Keith had trouble making it steady. If he wanted left, then the Lion would move right. If Keith wanted right, then it wanted left. The mental bickering caused the Lion to slam into the superheated rock. The thrusters gave out and Keith forced the Lion to crawl through the hole, scrapping and bumping against the molten walls.

Each hit rattled Keith's body. It felt like his teeth would shatter.

"Can't you pilot this thing better?" Pidge braced herself against Keith's chair as the Lion took another wall hit. "You keep running headfirst into the molten lava!"

"It's not like I'm trying to run into it, okay?"

At last, the Red Lion emerged from the hole, underneath a blue sky and white clouds. Rubbing the bridge of his nose, Keith nursed a growing headache as the Lion took over. Like a wet dog, the Lion shook itself, sending tons of molten rock flying and splashing all over the area. It felt clean. Raw. Excited.

It roared.

"Those Garrison guys don't look happy," Pidge commented. Turning towards the visual console, they both saw a convoy of rovers were beginning to encircle the Red Lion. "There must be at least a hundred of them," she muttered.

Keith glanced upward.

"But the sky is still clear," he grunted, throwing his weight back into the controls.

The Lion responded, more receptively, as it fired its hind leg thrusters and bolted into the sky. The inertia pushed Keith into his seat. Pidge herself would have been thrown back as well except she secured herself by wrapping her arms around Keith's neck. The cockfit was filled with desperate gasps for air and a little girl's screaming.

"Ahh! Ahhh! _AHHHH!_ "

"Y-you're ch-choking me!"

As Keith couldn't struggle for air and control of the Lion, the Lion began doing whichever maneuvers it wanted. Somersaults and nosedives and zigzags throughout the air. Feelings of happiness swelled within Keith. He might have shared in Lion's joy more if he wasn't being _strangled_.

He turned to Pidge, whose cheek was pressed against his.

"I… need… you… to… _stop…_ **choking** … _**me!**_ "

Pidge, to her credit, somehow managed to tighten her grip even more.

Releasing his hands from the controls, Keith sent his hands back behind him. Using his many years of self-defense classes at the Garrison, grabbed Pidge by the neck and flipped her. He was pleased to find the intense pressure around his neck had vanished except now there was intense pressure on top of his legs instead.

Pidge was sitting on his lap with her arms loosely dangling around his neck.

"E- _eh?_ "

Keith felt his heartbeat stop. The Lion lowered itself into a descent. It landed, gently seating itself in the middle of the desert. The convoy of Garrison rovers had followed its flight path and were quick to encircle it.

Then came an open frequency ping. The message opened without Keith's prompting.

Colonel Iverson's voice filled the cockpit.

"Keith! Miss Holt! I demand you two— _What in the Sam Hill are you two doing!?_ "

Pidge blinked at Keith before she jumped off of his lap. "N-nothing!" she said, waving her hands. "Nothing at all! Just, you know, typical joyride in an alien robot cat. Usual teenage stuff!"

"Y-yeah, what she said," Keith added.

Colonel Iverson growled.

"Keith, are you piloting that thing?"

"Sort of?"

"Well, I order you to turn power that thing down and exit it immediately! You've unlawfully commandeered Galaxy Garrison property! I'll have you—"

"You'll have me what?" Keith snapped. He didn't like being ordered around. "Expel me? You've already done that. Just add it to the list."

"Why you little—! Wait, what are you doing?"

Keith was fumbling the many tiny buttons.

"Not that one. Not that one, either…"

"Keith!" Iverson barked. "You better not be thinking of closing this channel!"

"Try that one," Pidge suggested quietly.

"Err—"

"No, not that— you know what, here."

"Cadet, I am warning you—!"

The message closed.

Pidge whistled as she lifted her finger off the console. "Guess we're outlaws, then." Tapping her bottom lip in thought, she continued, "Although, I guess since we took over a vehicle that the Garrison claims ownership of, we'd be pirates. And since this is an alien ship, it should be able to go into space…" Then her eyes began sparkling. "That means we'd be _space pirates_!"

"You are the nerdiest kid I've ever met." Keith shifted his hands back onto the controllers. Several consoles opened up. The Lion had settled down enough to allow him to fine tune the settings. Well, try to, anyway. "But space pirates, huh? Has a nice ring to it."

The Garrison had established a tighter perimeter than before. A small screen zoomed in on Colonel Iverson from the distance, shouting orders. Multiple open frequency pings were requesting response. Keith ignored them all. He was too busy trying to figure out if there was a more manual method of piloting the ship.

"Amazing," said Pidge as she watched Keith bounce around options. "The Lion seems to be… May I?"

Pidge pointed at the panel.

"Go for it," said Keith. Half of his mind was focused on the growing blockade of Garrison troops and the other was trying to figure out if there were pedals or stick shifts.

He heard a lot of rustling and creaking behind him. Then, a few key taps. And then—

" _A ha_! I knew it!"

"What?" Keith turned, expecting to see Pidge on the floor. Instead she was sitting in an identical pilot's chair behind Keith's. "How did you do that!?"

Pidge pointed at the side panel that was directly rigged to her laptop. A large smile was on her face.

"I had a theory," she said excitedly. "Well, more like a hypothesis really. I wondered that if I hooked my laptop directly to the Lion then it'd be able to automatically convert our Earth-based programming to its own native alien language. Since the Lion is able to communicate with you mentally, then it must be able to 'translate' any message that it's receiving."

"That doesn't explain the chair," Keith said with a bit of annoyance.

"Oh, I just typed in 'chair please' and voila!"

"T-that… worked?" Keith looked around the cockpit. He never even thought to try that. "Uh… can I pilot you manually?" he asked aloud.

He immediately winced as what felt like a clap of thunder boomed in his mind.

"I'm guessing you got denied?" Pidge asked slyly.

"Yeah, yeah…" Keith rubbed his forehead absentmindedly. "Okay, I think I've got an idea. Hey! Alien cat-ship thing!" he said loudly. "Can you teach me how to fly?"

On cue, basic instructions bled into his brain. They were basic instructions, but instructions nonetheless. The Lion had relented a bit of control. Not a lot, but it was enough.

Keith smiled.

"Buckle up, Pidge." He slammed the controls forward. "Thrusters!"

"But these seats don't have— _wuahhhh_!"

Inertia pushed Keith into his seat as the Red Lion blasted upwards. Pidge was screaming right behind him. This was definitely thrust and acceleration. Keith glanced at the console. The alien words slowly rearranged themselves. Instead of foreign, they looked as legible as simple English.

The blue skies were slowly fading to dark purple and finally black.

"We're in space," Pidge whispered before nearly screaming. " We're in space! We broke through the atmosphere like it was nothing!"

Keith's fingers twitched over the controls. He smirked. "I think this Kitty can go even faster."

Slamming the controllers forward again, the hind leg thrusters went into full burn.

Pidge watched the visual consoles as Keith focused his eyes forward. "We're… going near light speed! Faster than light!" she exclaimed. "And climbing!"

Keith didn't need to hear it, the info feeds ticking away real-time data and stats were being fed straight to his mind.

"We're almost there!" he said loudly.

"Almost _where_!?"

Keith had a destination in mind, one that he needed to get to. It was on the far side of the solar system.

A red speck passed by.

"Did we just pass Mars?" Pidge asked, craning her neck to view the already vanished red speck.

On the side, a zoomed image blinked on. "We passed the red planet with the big eye-looking storm." asked Keith.

"We just passed _Jupiter_!?" Pidge pressed her nose back against the stars racing across them. "It takes our ships months to get this far and this alien cat robot did it in seconds! This tech is amazing!"

Keith nodded in agreement. This tech was far more advanced than anything at the Garrison, perhaps even in the Solar System. Whatever the origins of the Red Lion, Keith was grateful. He finally had the means to see something for himself — something that the Garrison dallied on.

Saturn passed by with its rings, Uranus and its funny name, and then Neptune...

They were approaching the fourth moon of Pluto.

"Wait…" A tiny white speck was in the distance. Keith pulled on the controls, like a rider reining in a wild horse. "Wait! Wait! Stop! We're here! Go back! Turn around!"

The Lion accelerated, making a slow advance towards the surface.

"Kerberos…" said Pidge softly. "That's Kerberos!"

Keith ignored her. He was too busying trying to smooth out the landing. The Lion was making a descent, but it was far from controlled. Like a tourist caught up sight-seeing, the Lion jutted randomly in whichever direction it pleased. Keith felt like a dog walker trying to keep a curious megaton beast in line.

At last, the Lion landed with a soft _thud_.

They were a few kilometers from the Kerberos Mission site. The visuals only showed craters and damaged instruments. He couldn't get a view of anything. That didn't matter. Keith was willing to flip over every stone, probe, and rover if that's what it meant to find Shiro.

"I need to get down there," he said. "Think this ship has any spare space suits?"

Pidge looked at her laptop and tapped away. "It seems there's one suit in storage. There's a storage compartment in the belly." She stood up, dusted herself and tucked her laptop under her arm. "I've got wireless connection with the Lion. Let's go check it out!"

Keith followed Pidge out of the cockpit and down the hallway, arriving in a wide room. Like the rest of the Lion's interior, it was silver with blue circuitry running through it. Other than that, it was empty.

"I don't see the suit," said Keith.

"Hmmm." Pidge was reading off her laptop. "The Lion's rejecting my requests to open up the suit. It seems you need to interface with the Lion to activate it." She pointed towards a wall. "Try pressing your hand on that wall, I guess?"

Keith shrugged. Although he failed to see how that would do anything, he reminded himself was inside an alien ship that could materialize chairs out of thin air and traverse the length of a Solar System in seconds.

He placed his hand on the wall.

"Nothing's hap—"

Then the wall began glowing.

Pidge was smittened. "That's so cool!"

Where was once a silver wall, was now an open doorway leading to a small chamber. Within was a pod with a translucent screen. Inside was a suit, one slightly larger than Keith's build. The suit was white and black with red trimmings. Wondering how he was going to access the suit, Keith tapped the glass.

" _Wuahhh!_ "

The glass vanished.

Pidge laughed. "We have to work on your screams."

"I wasn't screaming!" Keith replied, flustered. He grabbed the suit out of the pod. "The suit seems almost my size. Unless you want to try it?"

She shook her head. "I'll stay on the ship. That suit looks a bit too big for me, anyway. Plus, you're the 'elite astro explorer', right?" she said slyly, nudging him in the ribs.

Keith rolled his eyes. It was the stupidest thing on the Garrison brochure.

"You know I got expelled, right?"

"Well we aren't all angels, Keith," said Pidge as she opened up her laptop. "Hurry up and change. I'm going to check out what features your suit has."

She continued humming along as Keith stood holding his space suit, completely oblivious to Keith's glare. He began to tap his foot impatiently.

" _Ahem_ ," he coughed finally.

Pidge looked up. "Huh? Aren't you going to change?"

Keith continued to scowl at her.

"Oh!" It finally dawned on her. "Sorry!" She retreated backwards slowly, her face flushed red. "Just to let you know, your suit is climate-controlled, temperature-controlled, and equipped with thrusters and comms and video feed so I'll wait right here in the cockpit while you, you know, go about your business!"

Pidge disappeared behind a pair of _whooshing_ doors.

Once he finished changing, Keith ordered the cargo bay hatch to open. To his surprise, the Lion obeyed the command. He leapt off, using the thrusters to soften the already gravity-diluted acceleration.

Landing on the surface, Keith took in the sights around him. It was a lot of emptiness.

"Hey, can you hear me? Am I on?"

A small messaging tab opened in the corner of Keith's visor, with Pidge front and centre of its frame.

"I guess I'm your Comms Spec, huh?" she said with a laugh. "Hope I don't disappoint. Although, I probably could double as an Engineer."

Keith thought to his last crew. "I've had worse," he replied. "You're definitely an upgrade."

There was a sparkle in Pidge's eyes. "Really!?"

"My last crew set the bar pretty low."

The response put Pidge in a pout.

Keith walked through the camp, slowly assessing piece after piece of equipment. Where he had expected some drilling equipment to assess ice deposits, he only saw a crater. A few rovers were missing and the ones left were all empty. The last recorded logs were timed to be minutes prior to the explosion and no reentry.

After checking a walk around the crater, Keith checked the living units — domed-shaped buildings with a pressurized hatch. He found nothing out of place. Commander Holt's notes were still scattered all over his desk. Engineer Officer Holt's latest read was still displayed on his private monitor. It was the Miss Solar System: Swimsuit Edition.

" _Typical_ … Hey Keith," Pidge frowned as Keith examined one of the Holt's' computers, "you mind bringing back that computer?"

"Why?"

"There might be something useful on it, you know?"

As Keith reached for the laptop, he frowned. Something that Colonel Iverson had said surfaced back into his mind.

"Iverson," he muttered. "He called you Miss Holt, right?"

"Err, yeah, he did," Pidge said hesitantly.

"Any relation?"

"N-nah, it's a coincidence."

Keith's eyes narrowed. He remembered how desperate Pidge had been to come with him to Kerberos, and what with the Commander and Engineer Holt being part of the mission…

… Still, if Pidge wanted to keep her privacy, then he'd give it to her.

Tucking the laptop under his arm, Keith stepped towards Shiro's desk. On it were simply a few pictures, some of which were from Shiro's graduating class. Others were of places he'd visited — Paris, Istanbul, and Tokyo to name a few. Keith must have seen the pictures and heard the stories dozens of times. He chuckled. Despite his heritage, Shiro was definitely not a fan of raw seafood.

But there was one picture that caught his eye.

It was of Keith when he'd graduated the Garrison Middle School class and was enrolled into its elite astro explorer's high school program. It was the same one that Shiro had been a part of in its inaugural class. Keith was smiling, one of the few times he could ever remember smiling, and holding up his diploma.

And, with a firm grip on his shoulder, was a smiling Shiro.

"Was Captain Shirogane your friend?" asked Pidge.

"Yeah," Keith answered curtly. He didn't want to say anymore. Tucking the photo in a pocket, he checked outside again but his mind was adrift.

Keith remembered his graduation day. He remembered Shiro telling him how proud he was. That weekend they went out camping in the forests. The only problem was that it was a holiday weekend with a bunch of other campers. The plan was to eat the fish that they'd catch from the river except that they didn't manage to bag anything bigger than an eraser. Luckily, Shiro had brought an emergency food supply and a grill. They ate tacos beneath the stars.

But the surface of an icy moon was a far cry from those lazy summer barbeques.

There weren't any stupid kids running around laughing and giggling. There weren't any weird old guys playing chess and telling corny jokes to anyone willing to listen. There weren't any birds chirping or bad music blaring off a beatbox. There weren't any pretty ladies making the moves on Shiro only to tell them he wasn't interested. There weren't any things like that

Just utter silence.

It was like walking in a graveyard.

Not a speck of natural green was on the surface. It reminded Keith of the desert: vast, empty, and lifeless. What did Shiro feel, as he took the first steps of any human ever on surface of Kerberos? Did he feel excitement? Like he was doing his duty?

All there was, was an empty feeling in the Keith's gut.

Did Shiro feel the same?

"It's funny," Pidge said over the comm line. "The news story that the Garrison's been peddling is that the Kerberos Mission disappeared due to the pilot error. But, even their own drones and satellites don't agree with that conclusion. And seeing it up close like this, there's no evidence of a crash anywhere. So what could have…?"

Keith looked up at the vast expanse of the universe.

"Aliens," he joked.

"… You're probably right," Pidge replied, seriously contemplating the answer. "I mean, we got here by an alien robot cat. There's a giant crater that wasn't there on any of the mission specs. It doesn't look like it was caused by an explosion or impact. It couldn't have been a meteor… it looks like something was pulling it… like a tractor beam of some kind—"

Red alerts began flashing all over Keith's heads-up display.

"Wh-what's happening?" Keith scanned the loadouts. "What's wrong?"

"Alarms are going off over here," Pidge shouted. "There's… something coming. Something big… a… Galra? A Galra battlecruiser?"

"Galra?" Keith's brow furrowed. "What's a Galra?"

Pidge's eyes widened.

"Aliens! And it's huge! It just sort of warped into existence, like… hyperspace!"

"Hyperspace?"

"You know how long it took for us to get to Kerberos?"

"Yeah?"

"Well it's faster than that."

"Oh."

He didn't like the sound of Gal-whatever battlecruisers going faster than the Red Lion. Frantic keyboard taps over the comm line revealed Pidge's panic. "Keith," she urged. "Get back to the Red Lion _immediately._ Everything's flashing red and I can't move this thing!"

Keith was already running. "Got it."

Then he remembered that he was on a moon of Pluto with weak gravity.

Securing the Holt's laptop under his arm, Keith jumped. A thought later, the loadout for thrusters on his suit opened. A pair of flat-wings on his back hummed briefly as it channeled some energy before releasing its kinetic force, propelling him towards his destination.

The Red Lion was still drifting just above the Kerberos surface.

Thoughts raced through Keith's mind. Today, he discovered that aliens exist. Or at least, alien robot cats. Then, there were these Galra with giant warships apparently warping in out of hyperspace. He didn't even know that hyperspace was a _thing_ until about thirty seconds ago!

Keith's mind came to a single conclusion, one that he would have been laughed out of a room for back on Earth before today: _hostile aliens must have abducted Shiro._

Back in the cockpit, Keith began checking all the readouts Keith sunk into his chair, readying his controls. He brought the Lion off the Kerberos surface and into low orbit.

An image appeared on screen of an object emerging out of space.

"I'm guessing that's a Galra battlecruiser."

Unlike the Red Lion, which was colorful and sleek, the battlecruiser was dark and purple. Spiky and lethal, it appeared designed for conquest. The ship looked even more intimidating than he expected. It was basically a giant warship.

"The Red Lion's scanners are going off like crazy." Pidge scanned her laptop back and forth. "It's detecting multiple shield units, anti-ship batteries, hundreds of fighters in the hull, and something called… an ion cannon?" Pidge looked up. "The specs on this thing doesn't look good for us."

Keith took in some air. Patience yields focus, patience yields focus. He needed to calm down and think. Right now the battlecruiser was just drifting around the Kerberos orbit. "Shouldn't a battlecruiser be, uh, battling us?" he asked.

"Huh, now that you mention it..." Pidge tapped on her laptop and frowned. "It appears that the Galra Battlecruiser is hailing us."

"Patch him through," said Keith. He tried to steady his shaking hands.

A video feed flickered on the screen, and Keith felt Pidge jump behind him. He couldn't blame her. His heartbeat had spiked.

One savage mechanical red eye fell on the two occupants of the Lion. It belonged to a sinister-looking alien. The armor it wore glowed in dark purples. Its skin… or fur… or whatever, was in a shade of purple. Thin cuts could be seen all over his face. His furry-looking ears were scarred and fangs peeked past his lips.

It was like a savage beast stuffed into a humanoid shape.

"Paladin of the Red Lion," said the one-red-eyed alien, "this is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. You are to surrender the Red Lion or you will be destroyed. I expect a reply promptly. You have one dobash. Be honored by my generosity."

The transmission closed.

"Who the heck was that?" asked Keith. "And what the heck is a dobash?"

"An alien Commander." Pidge supplied unhelpfully. "An alien Commander who wants to destroy us! _An alien Commander who wants to destroy us in a dobash!_ "

"Pidge! Relax," Keith snapped.

"You're right, you're right," Pidge said with a sigh. "He called you a Paladin… that's a pretty common tabletop class. It means 'defender of the faithful'. Maybe this Lion is some sort of spiritual or religious weapon? Did we just descrecrate some kind of sacred alien lion goddess!?"

Keith groaned. "There's an alien out to destroy us in the name of some Emperor of the Universe—"

" _Lord_ of the _Known_ Universe," Pidge corrected. "I've been reading through the Red Lion's database. There's a huge archive just on the Galra but it's all dated 10,000 years ago. Even this Sendak guy is on here..." He eyes looked up in terror. "This guy is a 10,000 year old alien warlord!"

"So there's a thousands of years old alien warlord out to conquer the known universe and if I don't hand over this Red Lion, he's going to destroy us," said Keith with a flourish. He scratched his head in frustration. His sweaty hair was itchy. "Well, he's not getting this Lion."

"Yeah," Pidge agreed. "He doesn't look like the type to leave us alone even _if_ we handed it over. What do we do!?"

Keith read through the battlecruiser specs on the console loadout. Without a doubt that thing was built for war. He took in a deep breath, and tried to calm himself. His thoughts were scrambled. The Lion wanted to fight. Keith wanted to run.

"We have to take on Sendak's ship, then we get out of here. We can't go back to Earth," said Keith as he glanced behind him towards a zoomed-in image of a pale blue dot. "Last thing we need is an alien invasion. So the only way out of this is to knock out that battleship."

"Battlecruiser," Pidge corrected, before her tone shifted back to worry. "The Garrison gave you guys dog fighting lessons right? Did they ever teach you how to take out giant warships in space? Your file said you were a Fighter-class pilot, right? Top of your class? They must have taught you something!"

"I didn't ask for a lecture," he said with a sigh. "So how do I take that thing out?"

"You have a heat ray, right?" Pidge suggested after adjusting her glasses. "Use that!"

"Oh, right," he muttered sarcastically, "because that's really simple to do. The Lion barely responds to any commands. It's hard enough just to make it fly in the general direction I want it! How am I supposed to even activate this heat ray!?"

"You did it before," she pointed out.

"It wasn't exactly _me_!"

As Keith checked to see how to activate the heat ray, a ping sounded in the cockpit. The Galra ship requested another transmission. Opening it up, it revealed the same Galra commander's scarred face.

"Paladin of the Red Lion," said Sendak, his lips curled in a sadistic smile. "My patience has been exhausted. My previous offer with its generous terms of surrender is now retracted. It will not be made again. Know that your demise was of your own volition. Enjoy oblivion."

Then the transmission died.

"He definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning," said Pidge. She paused. "Do they even have beds? Wait. Do they even _sleep_?"

"I'll be sure to ask them that next time." Keith managed to figure out how to use his heat ray. Unfortunately, it required a bit of charge time before firing.

"You have an attitude problem, you know that?" Pidge's eyes were lowered on the keyboard. "Yes! This Lion can wormhole!"

"Wormhole?"

"It's a faster-than-light travel method unique to this Lion and similar tech," she explained. "There's enough… residual essence of some Alphonse-or-something guy left in here to use as a medium to do it. It's faster than Galra hyperspace tech and untraceable!"

It sounded like an escape plan. "How long until you can open up a wormhole?"

"A few minutes," Pidge answered, returning to her work. "There are a lot of calibrations that need to be done after ten thousand years of stasis. Otherwise we might end up wormholing half of ourselves to opposite ends of the universe."

Keith didn't like the idea of his guts and head being on two seperate galaxies. "Take as long as you need," he said. The Red Lion's thrusters activated as it propelled him out of the Solar System. He passed the Oort Cloud — the icy barrier that marked the edges of the Solar System. The controls on the Lion felt smoother than before. It was like the beast _wanted_ to lead on a chase. "Let's see if this battleship can keep up."

"Battlecrui— _Ow_!"

"You bit your tongue, huh?"

"Y-weah." Pidge's eyes were watering. "F-wighters!"

Several notifications popped up on the visual display, zooming in on several squadrons of smaller ships emerging from the Galra battlecruiser. There were dozens of them. Keith smiled to himself, thanking the Garrison for the Fighter-class flight simulations.

The Red Lion dove into the middle of the formation, forcing the fighters to scatter. They circled around him, firing lasers of pink-ish beams of sinister-looking energy.

It was like a pretty simple game: dodge the bad beams.

And if there was an opening…

" _Fire!_ "

Keith slammed the right control stick forward. Roaring, the Red Lion opened its mouth. The molten heat ray erupted from the Lion's jaw and seared through a wave of Galra fighters.

"Whoa!" Pidge leaned out of her seat, looking at the aftermath of the destruction. "You must have taken out like ten of them in one shot!"

"Ace-in-a-day," Keith muttered, smiling to himself.

With an Immelmann turn there and a barrel roll there, Keith easily out-maneuvered the clunky Galra fighters. They had trouble matching the Red Lion's ability to decelerate and accelerate while turning. The advantage in maneuverability meant that Keith could pick off stray fighters or cut down entire formations with ease.

As he steadied the Lion, Keith noticed that the fighters were widening their spread, probably in an attempt to stay outside of the Lion's heat ray range.

He laughed. "This is too eas—"

There was a flash of purple light.

Pain erupted in Keith's mind. The Lion rocked from the explosion. Bluish electricity surged throughout the consoles as the cockpit flashed red. Several emergency damage notifications popped up on the display. Sucking in some air, Keith tried to regain his grip on the controls.

"What was that!?" he demanded.

Pidge brushed away from wayward strand of hair as she ran diagnostics over her laptop. "That Galra battlecruiser from earlier got us with a direct hit with it's… ion cannon! It almost broke through the Lion's passive shielding. Another one like that and this Lion's finished!"

Keith grit his teeth.

He could feel that the Lion was angry.

Angry for being hit.

"When is that wormhole going to be ready?"

"Just a minute more!" Pidge raised her thumb to her lip, biting the tip of it. "B-but… _Wahhh!_ The calibrations got scrambled cause of that last shot! I need to redo it!" She slammed her fist on the back of Keith's headrest.

"Hey! Watch it!"

"S-sorry," she apologized as Keith pulled the Lion to dodge another attack pattern. "We won't be able to wormhole like this. The Red Lion needs to be stationary for a few moments while it channels it— oh no," she gasped. "Oh no, no, no, no."

Keith began to feel Pidge's furious keyboard pecking was a bad omen.

"What now?"

"M-multiple Galra battlecruisers are hyperspacing all around us. There are at least ten of them!"

"Ten!?"

Keith was having enough trouble dealing with one Galra cruiser, but now _more_ were on the way?

"They'll be here… convert the seven, carry the three… the first one will be here in five minutes!" Pidge shouted.

"Can you open the wormhole before then?"

"Y-yeah. I-I think." Pidge sounded like she was on the verge of tears. "B-but the battlecruis—"

"Just get that wormhole open!"

"But if we get shot—!"

Keith threw his control sticks forward, nearly snapping them. The Red Lion went into overclock burn — he didn't know for how long — where it could outspeed the Galra fighters and battlecruiser.

With the Lion a safe distance away and temporarily out of range, he climbed out of his chair and turned towards his panicking support pilot. Pidge's hands were in her hair. Sweat and tears dripped down her cheeks as she focused intensely on her laptop keyboard.

"Hey!"

Keith struck the side of her chair with his fist to get her attention.

" _Eeep!_ "

She was panicking — that much was clear. She was young, still a kid, and definitely not trained for high stress situations. He looked at her shivering, tiny form looking even smaller as she curled into a frightened ball.

What would Shiro do?

Slowly, Keith lowered his hand onto her shoulder.

"Right now, I need you to get that wormhole open," he said as calmly as possible. "Nothing else matters. Don't think about all those battlecruisers. Don't think about the fighters right on our tail. Don't think about the ion cannons or any of that. Just think of the wormhole. _Got it?_ "

"B-but—"

Keith silenced her with a hand on her head.

"Patience yields focus." Keith thought back to the way Shiro would say those words and did his best to emulate it. "I've only known you for like, half a day, but you're the nerdiest, smartest kid I know. You _can_ do this. Roger?"

Pidge blinked. She quickly wiped her face, returning a determined nod.

"Roger!"

Sliding back to his seat, Keith resumed control as he slowly broke the Lion out of overclock burn.

The Galra fighters would be on top of him within a few moments. He needed his gut to stop rumbling with nerve wracking anxiety and excess acid. Once, when Keith was helping Shiro fix his speeder, he'd explained to Keith that a Commander couldn't panic in front of the crew. Whenever there was an emergency, people looked towards the one in charge — their leader. So, if the leader was panicking, then the crew would panic and nothing would get done.

"Panicking is the second thing you do," Shiro explained as Keith handed him a wrench.

"So what's the first?"

"Complete the mission," he said with a smile. "Now, pass me that screwdriver."

Several alerts of incoming Galra fighters broke Keith out of his memory.

"Thanks, Shiro," he mumbled. The terror in his stomach hadn't gone away, but he couldn't worry about that now. His limbs were still loose and limber, feeling like jelly from the dread. Keith ignored the terror flushing throughout his body.

He'd vomit later.

Right now, there was a battlecruiser to disable.

"Three minutes until the second battlecruiser warps in!" Pidge advised.

Keith grunted in acknowledgement.

Throwing the Lion back towards the battlecruiser, Keith slipped through the fire spread. A barrage of ship cannons and fighters formed a dense web of overlapping fire. With spins and sudden stops, Keith dodged each bolt, maneuvering them like a tailor threading a needle.

"Argh!"

A wayward shot grazed the Lion's back.

"Two minutes!" cried Pidge.

Pushing forward on the controls, Keith threw the Lion into the last of its overclock burn to break through the Galra fighter formation. Flying up alongside the battlecruiser hull, he was well within firing range of the heat ray.

And yet…

… Keith didn't want to fire.

Or rather, the Lion didn't want to.

There was an urge — a baser instinct swirling within Keith's gut. He wanted vengeance. He wanted payback. He wanted to return the favor for that cheap shot with the ion cannon from earlier.

He wanted to _humiliate_ the cruiser.

The answer roared in Keith's mind.

"Form jawblade!"

A blade appeared in the Lion's jaws. Keith dove for the rear of the Galra battlecruiser. Thick cuts slashed into the hull, leaving behind a scorched scar down the vertical length of the ship. As he pulled back, the cut exploded, nearly tearing the battlecruiser in half.

"Nice!" Pidge shouted. "One minute until their reinforcements are here! The wormhole is ready to activate! But we need to get out of range first!"

Smiling, Keith turned the Lion around and began to accelerate out of the battlecruiser's attack range. "He's definitely not going to be following us anymore," he said, looking back at the stationary cruiser.

A safe distance away, Keith brought the Lion to a full stop, letting it drift in space as Pidge rerouted energy and engines to creating the wormhole.

"It's ready!" Pidge leaned over Keith's shoulder and pointed at the visual display. "There!"

Before the Lion, a circle covered in magic-looking runes formed. It looked like a circular prism of light.

"Go!" Pidge cried.

The Red Lion roared. Keith's body sank into the pilot's chair as they rocketed forwards.

The prism of light drew closer.

As the sped forward, Keith could feel the Red Lion straining. He could _feel_ the Lion's pain.

"Come on!" he urged.

"Keith! You've overclocked the thrusters," Pidge said urgently. "They're going to overheat!"

"Almost… _there!_ "

The wormhole was a claw's swipe away when it happened.

The Lion groaned in pain as its thrusters gave out.

"Not yet," growled Keith. "Go!"

And, with throwing all of his weight forward, the Lion stumbled into the wormhole just as a flash of purple light engulfed the cockpit.

An instant later, a thunderous explosion rocked the Red Lion.

"Argh!"

Keith barely got a look of a menacing battlecruiser flickered into existence before the cockpit went dark. All screens and visuals flickered off. They couldn't see anything. All Keith could feel was them tumbling uncontrollably into the wormhole.

"W-wha-what's happening!?"

Suddenly, the cockpit flashed red as visual displays rebooted. Alarms were blaring everywhere. Screens came back on with loadouts and warnings popping up all over the background of ethereal energy. There were too many to count and too many to read.

Keith made a safe assumption that they were all bad.

He didn't need to see a replay on the visual logs. He knew it had been an ion cannon from the newly arrived Galra cruiser. How stupid of him! He'd forgotten to utilise basic evasive maneuvers.

"Lucky shot," he scowled. It didn't change the situation, but it changed how he felt about it.

"The wormhole was thrown off from that last attack," said Pidge as she frantically clacked away at her laptop. "I'm recalculating, but I'm having a hard time stabilizing a giant quadrupedal alien ship going exponentially faster than the speed of light!"

The visual displays revealed a storm. Red, blues, dark purples, with bolts of lightning struck all around them. It was like the inside of a volcano-thunderstorm-hurricane.

Keith gritted his teeth. He had to make sure that the Red Lion—

 _BOOM!_

—didn't touch the edges.

The cockpit violently shook.

"We're going to crash!" was the last thing Keith said before he blacked out.

How long later he came to, he did not know.

Blearily opening his eyes and rubbing the grass off his face, Keith looked around. It definitely didn't look like what he expected to be on the inside of a Galra battlecruiser. There were trees and blue skies and grass. He sniffed the air. It smelled like Earth at least. Had the wormhole somehow sent him back?

Or maybe he just had a really trippy dream?

No, that wouldn't explain his alien spacesuit.

"Pidge?" He clicked into his helmet. "Hey Pidge, you there?"

There was no response.

Keith quickly checked himself. He still had his armor, but the Red Lion was nowhere to be found. The wormhole must have thrown Keith and the Red Lion into different places. Pidge was probably with the Red Lion and was too far to communicate with Keith's suit.

Hopefully, anyway.

She and the Red Lion could be halfway across the universe for all he knew.

Scanning the area, Keith placed a hand on the thick trunk of a tree. It felt real. The temperature was perfect. Readouts on the local atmosphere determined it was suitable for human life. After fumbling for a bit, Keith pressed a button on his neck that phased off his helmet into storage. The fresh air was crisp and welcome.

Keith slowly walked around, taking in the sights. It was a beautiful place.

"Is someone… humming?" he wondered.

It wasn't a bird. Keith didn't like joining Shiro on his early morning bird-watching sprees, but he knew that the sound wasn't from a bird.

Breaking through some bushes, Keith found the source.

And it most definitely wasn't a bird.

Rather, it was a girl by the stream. She hummed to herself as she washed her clothes.

A branch snapped underneath Keith's foot, and the girl suddenly whipped around in alarm. Now that she was facing him, Keith could see that she almost looked human, if not for her pointed ears. Her skin was fair, and long blonde hair hung behind her in twintails. The robes she wore were purple, white and blue, and strange green tattoos were beneath her purple eyes.

Keith also realised that she was looking at him cautiously. He stepped forwards with his hands in the air.

"I'm not here to fight," he said slowly and clearly. "I'm just looking for my friend."

Carefully, the girl walked forward. Keith kept his hands up where she could see them — hoping that if this girl didn't understand English, she could at least see he wasn't a threat to her. Finally, the two of them were an arm's length from each other.

Keith breathed in and tried again with what he hoped was a friendly smile.

"Nice to meet you— _uuaahhh_!"

The next thing he knew, he was on his back.

"Where the heck did you learn judo?" he groaned.

"Judo?" said the girl, her eyes narrowing in suspicion. Well, at least she knew English. "This is basic Altean hand-to-hand martial combat techniques, passed down through generations." She kept her fighting stance. "Who are you? Identify yourself!"

"I'm Keith," said Keith. "From Earth." He stood up. Or rather, he tried to. A swift boot to the chest from the girl kept him pinned to the ground. She was _way_ stronger than she looked. "I'm not here to fight you!"

"Oh?" said the girl. "Then what are you here for?" The girl's eyes focused on Keith's armor. "You're wearing Altean-style armor… I've only seen these in history books… Where did you get this, _alien scum_!?"

"I woke up here after flying in a Red Lion—"

The girl gasped.

"The Red Lion…? T-then y-you're a Paladin, right? You must be!" The girl looked around expectantly. "Where are the other four?"

"Four what?"

"The other Paladins of Voltron? The legend says that there are five, right?"

"M-maybe?" Keith vaguely remembered that Sendak addressing him as a Paladin.

"Wait," the girl said with a frown. "How do I know that you're telling the truth? Are you _really_ a Paladin of Voltron?"

Keith grimaced and looked at his body. "Believe it or not, I don't wear this for fun."

"Red armor…" Romelle breathed. "It's just like the legends describe."

"Yeah… just like the legends...," said Keith. "Now, could you please get your foot off my chest?"

"Oh! Sorry!" said the girl as she fell to her knees in apologize. Hearing Keith cough, she went to her basket to retrieve something. "I'm so sorry. Here." She handed him a flask. "Some water."

Sitting upright, Keith grabbed the bottle and chugged it. Cool water quickly filled his throat and before coughing it out. The water was refreshing, yet different. It tasted almost like… apples or some other type of fruit.

He would have enjoyed the water more if there wasn't a girl staring at him.

Keith was used to stares. He was used to stares if he was dirty from a fight or overexerting himself during physical training. He was used to stares when he would clear and ace flight simulations. He was used to stares when he would request the Chef's Special at the cafeteria to the disgust of his peers.

But this was the first time a girl was staring at him, so close, with eyes practically sparkling.

"C-can I help you with something? Ouch!"

"Your ears… they're ugly," the girl remarked as she pulled at Keith's ears like a toddler checking to see if they were real. She looked thoughtful. "Where are the others?"

"I don't know. Right now, I think I'm the only one."

The girl looked confused. "But, you're a Defender of the Universe, right? You're oathbound to assist the weak and downtrodden, correct? You have to cherish and help others?"

The girl looked delighted. She was grinning from pointy ear to pointy ear. The distance between her and Keith's noses became almost-zero.

"Uh, sure?" said Keith. "I mean, I think so? Look, I just pilot this Red Lion thing—"

"Then that's good enough."

"It is?"

The girl gave a satisfied smile before extending a hand.

"I'm Romelle, and you're on New Altea. I would like your help, O Paladin of Voltron!"

* * *

 _Chapter 2 Fin_

 **Season 1**

 **Editor:** _Olivier Roux_

 **Next Chapter:** _?_

 **A/N:** _Thanks for reading._

 _Why is there still no Romelle tag for Voltron: Legendary Defender?_


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